While this is a broad definition, the advantage is that it captures one of the most important trends in the smartphone market in the last couple of years — the phenomenal popularity of phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 released in 2013 (5 inches) and S5 launched in 2014 (5.1 inches).

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we survey these trends toward larger screens and build out our own forecast for the phablet market. We also look at how phablets have altered the smartphone market and cannibalized demand for tablets.

Global SSD sales are expected to grow 60% on year in 2014 after nearly doubling a year earlier, buoyed by continually declining NAND flash prices, slimming-down of notebooks, and the rise of convertible tablets, according to Digitimes Research.

SSD products with a storage capacity of 60GB were the mainstream in 2012, but shipments of 120GB and 240GB models began gaining momentum in 2013, buoyed by falling prices. By 2014, 240GB models have become the mainstream, while the roll-out of 480GB devices is likely to drive a new round of shipment growth, said Digitimes Research.

Intel has recently launched its new series of chipsets that feature native support for M.2 SSDs, which is likely to encourage other memory storage firms to roll out related SSDs in the second half of 2014. M.2 SSDs support both PCIe and SATA interfaces and have a strong possibility of replacing 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, Digitimes Research commented.